1248 
RURAL NEW-YORKER 
SQUADRON 
FRONT 2 B/ain. BACK 2 '/a in 
FRONT, 2 Vain, BACK I 3/4 
THE NEW ' 
COLLAR 
The important feature of 
this new collar that men 
are demanding this season 
is,—that it does NOT wear out 
your shirt across your shoulders. 
Thia new model does not rub 
the shirt because it is made 
with "modified curv’es.” 
And of course, like all 
SLIDiWELI 
^ COLLARS ^ 
it is made with the two “nationally 
asked for" collar features—the Pat¬ 
ented Tie-Protecting Shield and the 
Graduated Tie-Slide Space—exclu¬ 
sive Slidewell features. 
20c—2 for 35c—3 for 50c 
iHall, Hartwell & Co., Troy, N. Y. 
^HALIISARK 
m SHIRTS 
—Indanthrene Colors 
"Good to the Last Drop" 
C 'HALVES relish and thrive upon 
y Blatchford's Calf Meal, the milk sub¬ 
stitute. They increase in size and weight 
rapidly: are healthy and vigorous, no indiges¬ 
tion—no scouring. 
Blatchford’s 
Calf Meal 
should be used to push the calf forward to a grain diet. 
This important move is more essential now than ever. 
Write for Booklet 
' " ■ — ■ Calves at the 
Smallest Cost." If you raise any calves write for 
the booklet. It is mailed without cost. 
Blatchford Call Meal Factory, Dept. 64, Waukegan, III. 
DEUVEREO 
Money refunded if not satisfactory 
THE MOORE BROS. OF ALBANY 
NEW YORK 
E have books on 
all subjects of 
farming by rec¬ 
ognized authorities 
Write us and we will 
quote you prices 
THE RURAL. NEW-YORKER 
333 West 30th Street, New York 
To begin with, we didn’t have much 
of anything, besides a potato fork, with 
one tine broken, and about a pint of 
gumption. The city lot, of which we 
secured eminent domain in the Fall by 
right of the rent, was just a city lot, 
luxuriant in its production of burdocks, 
milkweed and tin cans. There wasn't 
much of a beginning. Nor were pre¬ 
vious experiences in city lots productive 
of reasonable hopes here. There had 
been struggles with sunbaked clay, a few 
sprouts of green, gorgeous hopes in May, 
and sun-baked clay nad a few weeds in 
July. 
But here we were, stared in the face 
every day by Hooverisms. VClean your 
plate,” “Make every piece of land work,” 
"Fat green vegetables and save wheat,” 
and such like. The papers were printing 
columns of how to grow gardens. They 
reinforced our hopes and gave them a 
fresh start. 
But these Hooverisms did not begin to 
appear very numerously until this 
Spring, and, as I was saying, we took 
tliis unpromising city lot in the Fall. 
“You want to put some organic matter 
in it,” said the professor of science in 
the high school who came to make a 
neighborly call. 
’“Yes, exactly,” said we. “You siky— 
er-organic matter—that is to say—er—” 
“Yes,” said the professor. “Place or¬ 
ganisms in the soil, whose disintegration 
will produce humus, and release certain 
chemical elements.” 
“Oh, yes,” said we, more deeply im¬ 
mersed in doubt than ever. 
“Aw, he means bury garbage and stuff 
iu the ground,” said the man in the seed 
store. “That stuff will rot and make 
manure aud give plants something to 
grow on,” 
“You mean,” I said, “that horrible 
stuff we put into the garbage pail, and 
hope for the garbage wagon—orange 
peels, eggshells, potato parings and all 
that sort of stuff? Will that make a 
garden grow? All the books say, ‘Get 
well decayed barnyard manure.’ ” 
“Barnyard manure’s all right, if you 
can get it,” said the seller of seeds. “But 
where are you going to get it? Every¬ 
body’s getting ai*itomohiles now, and 
there ain’t any more horse manure.” 
So Jimmy and I set to work to bury 
garbage with our three-tiiied potato fork, 
whose uncei’tain handle was likely to 
come off, leaving the fork at embarrass¬ 
ing moments sticking in the hard soil. 
.Timmy was four. We buried it deep at 
the dead of night, sometimes after day¬ 
light had fled, sometimes early in the 
morning lest neighbors should wonder, 
for we were not thoroughly convinced 
that it was quite reputable to inter 
refuse. 
The seed-store man was ever our 
faithful Achates. He proved to he a 
Hollander, beneath whose thatch of curly 
hair reposed moi*e lore about intensive 
gardening than the professors ever 
dreamed of. Faithful Achates? Aye! 
He led us as the famous shade of the 
dim past once led the timoi'ous Yirgil 
into the mysteries of the depths of the 
lower regions. He was our philosopher, 
guide and friend. 
Did the numerous government bulletins 
with which we covered our table pres¬ 
ent things in bewildering terms? He 
was o-ur interpreter. Did worms our 
garden infest? It was he who assured 
us that worms were beneficent agents, 
chewing up the organic matter and de¬ 
positing it on the soil. Those were 
Jimmy’s “urms.” whose fattening we 
watched all that Fall. If Jimmy and I 
had all the fish we planned to catch 
with those “urms,” we could supply 
the American army. 
We held a Festival of the Falling 
Leave.s. did Jimmy and I. I was the 
instigator, aud Jimmy the innocent 
agent of the delusion. It was Jimmy 
who got all the kids in the neighbor¬ 
hood inveigled into the game of loading 
their carts with the elm and maple 
leaves which the street sweepers piled 
along the curb. It was a fine party. 
Jimmy was voted a great host for al¬ 
lowing all the children to draw leaves 
into his backyard. They built forts 
and houses and first-line trenches, and 
wound up by leaving a pile, equal to a 
couple of w'agonloads, exactly where I 
wanted them. 
By Spring the leaves were a black, 
rotted mass. More “organic matter to 
make nitrogen available,” which we 
spaded in. Come Spring’s first glad, 
warm day, I wont to my seed man once 
more. 
“How much do I want of what?” 
was the question I put to him, A mere 
clerk would have passed up the ques¬ 
tion. My Hollander began to reason 
with me. 
“You want vttuce, about five cents’ 
worth; you want beets, about 10 cents’ 
worth. You’ll want pretty soon half a 
pint of corn. You want now a pint of 
peas. I’lant peas first. If we have a 
frost, ’twon’t hurt peas. You want 
some chard for greens. Y'ou want a 
pint of beans. We’ll have a dozen to¬ 
mato plants for you bimehy.” 
There’s a plank walk bisecting our 
yard. From this, without getting muddy 
feet, Jimmy and I w'cre able the day 
before Easter to dig with our three-tinod 
fork enough space to plant a row of 
peas. The following Saturday we 
plauted another and a short row of let¬ 
tuce. We chrefully drew a map of our 
garden, and religiously inscribed the 
dates of our respective plantings. 
We heard of a man who had tried 
“keeping hens for profit” in his back¬ 
yard, who was swamped with barrels 
and barrels of lieu manure. We lashed a 
.soap box to Jimmy’s cart, put a layer 
of coal ashes in the bottom and besought 
him for some. That cubic foot or so of 
hen manure was the only fertilizer we 
used. But Ave used it with judicious 
care. We saved the wood ashes when 
we started fresh fires, and mixed small 
portions of wood ashes and some coal 
ashes sifted with the strong hen manure, 
and applied it sparingly. 
All during the Fall and early Spring, 
in spading over the lumpy, clayey soil 
we had applied coal ashes. They broke 
up the solid character of the clay, 
helped drain the ground and kept it from 
packing so hard. We shall put in more 
coal ashes this Fall. 
The sackbut • and psaltery sounded 
the day Jimmy found the first lettuce 
poking its head through the ground, 
and the first semblance of green where 
we planted peas. Then we began to 
know the delights of gardening. From 
that day on life was a succession of 
surprises. One day it was beans that 
had sprouted, another day we were de¬ 
bating Avhether it was corn or grass that 
we discovered. Pieplant, which we set 
out, flourished like the green bay tree at 
the far end of the garden; and it has 
yielded numerous pies besides a few 
cans of preserves on the cellar shelf. 
We never have known the taste of 
real beans and peas until these days, 
when we go out before breakfast and 
pick them from our own vines and give 
them to mother to cook for dinner. 
Canned peas are a tosteless, woody food 
compared with the fresh, tender peas 
of our own raising. We had three 
messes of peas; then we pulled the 
vines and piled them behind the rose¬ 
bushes out of sight to rot to go back to 
the soil this Fall. In their place we 
set out celery plants, hoping for at least 
that much of a Thanksgiving dinner. 
As for lettuce—we have had lettuce 
to eat all Summer, lettuce to burn, let¬ 
tuce to invest, lettuce to give to the 
poor. Constant thinning has kept us 
supplied. We lost social caste with our 
friends by having lettuce for break¬ 
fast. But what is one to do? We dare 
not let it go to waste. Besides, picking 
off a leaf here and there, with the dew 
.still on it, and bringing it straight to the 
table, is a different proposition from the 
lettuce you buy in the stores. 
There has not been a day that this 
plot, about 15 by 25 feet, has not 
yielded us something to eat since it began 
early in .Tune. At the middle of July 
October 27, 1917 
we had corn in silk, tomatoes three 
inches in diameter ripening on vinos 
which grew as high as Jimmy’s head, 
beans for dinner almost every day— 
tender, fresh string beans—chard, beet 
greens, an onion now and then, a mess 
of pieplant, and a hill of potatoes stuck 
in here and there in odd corners, which 
we hope will yield some tubers. 
Of course, Jimmy and I started a 
debit and credit account with our garden. 
We kept it going almost a week. We 
found that we were almost even with 
the game by that time, having grown 
enough to pay for our seeds, then we 
somehow began to forget to credit the 
vegetables we brought in. Jimmy devel¬ 
oped his mercantile spirit by peddling 
sundry quarts of beans to the neighbors, 
and now and then rattles the nickels in 
his bank. 
Yes; you certainly can do a lot with 
a small backyard, but, in the words of 
the professor, “You must place organ¬ 
isms in the soil, whose disintegration 
will produce humus and release certain 
chemical elements.” Walter ii. main. 
Live Stock Feeding Problems 
Ration for Grade Guernsey 
My grade Guernsey did not dry off be¬ 
fore freshening August 26. Now she 
gives about 25 pounds of milk per day. 
My pasture is poor. I give her a good 
feeding of corn twice daily and cut grass 
for her at night; also about five pounds 
of grain, mixed. 100 lbs. bran, 100 lbs. 
middlings, 100 lbs. cornmeal and would 
have added 50 lbs. of cottonseed, hut 
could not get it. Cornmeal costs .$4.40 
per cwt. Can I add something else, prof¬ 
itably, in place of cottonseed? Would 
you suggest any change in her feed in 
view of present prices? I sell four quarts 
of milk per day and make butter of the 
remainder, except two quarts of whole 
milk per day fed to calf. Can I get beet 
pulp anywhere in my vicinity? H. D. P. 
Schenectady, N. Y. 
Some cows are very persistent milkers 
and it is impossible to dry them off before 
they freshen. As you say, 25 pounds of 
milk is not an exceptionally large amount 
for a fresh cow, but a cow that milks 
throughout her lactation period makes a 
good family cow. If you can get ground 
oats cheaper than cornmeal, substitute 
them in place of cornmeal. A grain ra¬ 
tion supplying more protein would be bet¬ 
ter. Try 100 lbs. bran, 100 lbs. gluten 
feed, 100 lbs. ground oats, 50 lbs. linseecl 
oilmeal and one per cent salt. I do not 
know where you can get dried beet pulp 
in your locality. Large wholesale grain 
dealers carry it when it is on the market. 
It would make a good feed to supplemeut 
remainder of ration, feeding about three 
pounds daily, soaked in three times its 
weight in warm water. u, f. j. 
Rations for Cows, Horses and Swine 
1. Will you give me a balanced ration 
for cows milking about 10 quarts, .3.8 
per cent, per day? I would like a ration 
Igiving the greatest amount of nutri¬ 
ment at the least cost possible. The 
cows weigh about 700 to 1,000 pounds 
apiece. 2. Also, ration for horses weighing 
1,100 to 1,350 pounds, doing regular farm 
work. 3. What would be a good growing 
ration for pigs weighing now about 70 
pounds? The following prices are paid 
for the feeds listed below: Wheat bran, 
$2 per cwt,; corn chop, $4.40; rye bi’an, 
.$2.50; cottonseed, $2.75; gluten, $2.80; 
linseed meal (20 per cent, protein), $2.10; 
oats, 96c per bu.; rye, $1.85; middlings, 
$2.60 per cwt.; Alfalfa meal, $2.80. I 
have oats, rye and wheat of my own, but 
will use other feeds if they are cheaper. 
For roughage, have oats, cow peas, hay, 
clover hay, corn fodder, meadow and Tim¬ 
othy hay and cow beets. p. G. G. 
Pennsylvania. 
1. I should feed the variety of roughage 
you have on hand so that cows get a feed 
a day of the clover and oat and pea hay, 
and a feed of the Timothy, with what 
corn fodder they will clean up. I should 
give each cow 15 or 20 pounds of beets a 
day, and, if you have enough, feed half 
this amount twice a day. Make the grain 
ration one part wheat bran, two parts 
ground oats, one part gluten feed, one 
part cottonseed, one-half part linseed 
meal and 1 per cent. salt. Feed grain at 
rate of a pound to about four pounds of 
milk produced daily. 2. Oats are a bet¬ 
ter proposition than corn, and should 
feed horses a peck a day. 3. For grow¬ 
ing pigs make grain ration 50 parts mid¬ 
dlings, 25 parts ground oats and 25 parts 
low-grade linseed meal. Peed what pigs 
will clean up well. H. F. J. 
» ki 'r i., .i , _ Ou 
